


A Sure Thing

by bhaer



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, F/F, Forced Marriage, Lesbian Sex, Rule 63, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 15:28:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bhaer/pseuds/bhaer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Courfeyrac is engaged to be married. Combeferre offers her comfort. It all goes up from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sure Thing

"I'm getting married."

Henriette Combeferre eyed the woman in front of her, the rumblings of a migraine growing behind her eyes. Cécile Courfeyrac looked unfairly pretty as always, even with bloodshot eyes and a trembling lower lip. 

"I'm very happy for you. When's the wedding?" Henriette said quietly. Her first instinct was to pound her fists on the ground and scream but she knew that the slightest show of grief would completely destroy Cécile. Poor, emotional Cécile who was clearly holding back a fresh barrage of tears. No, Henriette needed to be strong for her friend. She straightened her back and closed her novel.

"I don't know and I don't care. Mother's arranging it. Y-you must promise to visit me all the time," Cécile whimpered. 

"Of course. Will you be staying in Paris?" Henriette said in what she hoped was a calm, conversational tone. It would not do to make Cécile more upset than she was. 

"I think so. I suppose things will be terribly different when I have a husband and probably children." Cécile frowned at the odious idea.

"Not very different," Henriette said, standing up from her favorite armchair and feeling the ache in her bones. She had been up most of the night whispering plots with Alexandrie and only now was beginning to feel the effects. 

"I flirted with the cad for months to shut Mother up and then he has to— to propose and what am I supposed to say?  _No thank you, I much prefer dooming my family to financial ruin._ It's revolting." Cécile looked like a child again, stamping her foot because she was refused a new doll. Henriette felt a wave of affection for the petulant girl.

"You sound like Alexandrie," Henriette said gently. It was true. Though Cécile, in a new green gown with a perfectly set topknot and tumbling chestnut curls, looked every bit the bourgeois lady Alexandrie Enjolras hated, her eyes glowed with the sort of hectic zeal Henriette was used to seeing in her blonde cousin. 

"Alexandrie isn't half wrong. You're  _so_ lucky, Henriette. You have three older sisters to be married to rich prigs and you can stay home and draw your flowers and be left alone!" Cécile cried suddenly. Henriette bit her tongue.  Cécile was normally brighter than this. It was a thoughtless comment and one Henriette wouldn't entertain.

"You'll be left alone enough. And I shall visit you and cheer you up whenever you need me," Henriette said soothingly, laying a hand on Cécile 's arm. Henriette felt the muscles loosen under her touch. Cécile's painted face seemed to crumble.

Henriette Combeferre, used to being socially inept and ridiculous, had an encyclopedic knowledge of Cécile's body signals. Seeing her friend relax, she continued with the next logical action: a playful kiss on the lips.

Cécile looked confused, then smiled. Her face had brightened already.

"Is this quite right?" She whispered, looking towards the door. The youngest Combeferre daughter, a small girl of six, was singing a folk song clearly audible through the walls. 

"You're nearly a married woman, with the moral authority that accompanies the position. You tell me," Henriette said innocently. Cécile responded with a series of enthusiastic kisses before pulling away and quickly unbuttoning her dress.

"As long as my new dress isn't ruined. It's a lovely shade of emerald, isn't it? I have to wear it next week when we have lunch with Jeanne," Cécile chatted as she slid out of the silky material. 

"Jeanne will be very disappointed you aren't eloping to Gretna Green. And Alexandrie will suggest violent revolt, so be prepared." Henriette stood behind Cécile, undoing the laces of her corset with fingers trained by years of needlework. Cécile let out a throaty laugh and Henriette thought warmly that she was starting to sound like her old self again.

"As long as I don't get blood on any new gowns, I'm happy to bayonet unwanted fiances as a symbol for women everywhere. Oh darling, don't you adore my chemise?" 

Henriette ran a delicate hand over the embroidery.

"I'd prefer it on the floor. Hurry up, I've promised to call on Alexandrie before dinner."

Cécile did as she was told with a wild smile. Henriette, as she always did when confronted with the naked Cécile, had to hide her gasp. She was used to her own body, all awkward angles and jutting bones. Even her sisters were skinny and flat.

Cécile seemed to glow in the candlelight, her too-tanned skin smooth. Henriette couldn't believe any woman could look so much like a statue or a painting. She had been... touching her friend since they were not much more than children and still she hesitated before putting a hand on Cécile's large breasts. 

Henriette wrapped her thin arms around Cécile's plump body and tried not to imagine a future where this, the consuming physical relationship of her life (second only to her friendship with Alexandrie, who fulfilled her intellectual needs) was gone. 

Cécile was licking the side of Henriette's neck skillfully and pushing Henriette, still fully clothed, to the bed. Henriette reached out and pushed a pile of books and papers onto the floor and lay back as Cécile held her to the sheets, a hand on her sternum. 

Henriette arched her back and felt the tension slide out of her shoulders as her spine cracked back into place. 

“Too much time hunched over books, huh?” Cécile’s smile was devilish and Henriette was suddenly unsure of whether or not she wanted to smack or kiss her companion. She settled for a kiss to Cécile’s collarbone, and grinned inwardly as she elicited a small moan. 

Henriette Combeferre _was_  a pacifist, after all, and so she knew that making the incorrigible Cécile Courfeyrac beg with longing was much more satisfying than any violence. 

"I shall never stop!" Cécile exclaimed, placing wild, wet kisses on Henriette's chest. 

"Your husband shan't mind. Sodomy is a respectable occupation of the upper clas—  _oh."_

Cécile had pulled a hand under Henriette's skirts and was massaging her sex in slow, rhythmic circles. 

Henriette summoned her seemingly limited thoughts and pushed her glasses further up her nose. She wanted to see Cécile clearly as the elder girl leaned down, breasts swinging, large brown nipples erect. It was too picturesque. Not for the first time Henriette had an urge to paint the scene like a botanical illustration.

"Perhaps I shall be a good wife," Cécile whispered. She had picked up the pace of her movements and Henriette was finding it hard to think of anything but the smoldering sensation under her stomach and the way Cécile's curls framed her round, delicate face.

Playing with Alexandrie was quick and utilitarian. It was an exercise meant to relieve physical discomfort, no different than eating a meal with her cousin. Henriette privately preferred Cécile, who was passionate and wild in this, as she was in everything. 

Alexandrie and Henriette had always been tactile with each other. Cécile had initiated _this_ paticular method of touching, first claiming she needed practice for her future husband. When their politics became such that the idea of obtaining sexual proficiency for a man seemed ridiculous, it was too late to stop. Henriette, for all her big words and careful note-taking, wasn't very good at controlling her desires and had grown into awkward adulthood suddenly filled with wants she didn't understand.

It was a service good friends rendered each other. 

It just so happened this service was one of Cécile's particular talents (next to embroidery and playing the harp). 

Henriette breathed heavily, struggling to keep her voice to a reasonable level as she asked, in a shaking, forced politeness for Cécile to just finish already. She was vaguely aware that she had an engagement to keep and that there were servants bustling outside. 

Cécile, with a characteristic grin (the same charming grin that Henriette had tried to sketch dozens of times, always failing) slipped a plump finger inside Henriette, rubbing the spot she had discovered, bringing on a wave of pleasure. 

Henriette let herself be overcome with it and only after the sensation had left her languid and groggy did she push herself up by her elbows. Cécile was sitting, quite innocently, on the bed, her hands folded carefully just above the mass of dark hair between her legs.

" _I_  was supposed to be cheering  _you_  up," Henriette said, unable to sound truly annoyed. Her head was still spinning pleasantly.

"That did cheer me up. Making you smile cheers me up. You don't smile nearly enough, dear," Cécile said. Her own smile was radiant. 

"I believe I promised to call on Alexandrie. Would you care to join me?" Henriette asked shakily. She rolled onto her feet and smoothed out the creases in her simple cream gown. 

Cécile clapped her hands together excitedly.

"P'raps she can cheer me up as well!" Cécile said, laughing as she spoke. She made no move to dress her self, only patted her hair to check that the complicated style was still in place.

"We're all at your command to see you through this trying time," Henriette said, feeling suddenly sure that regardless of husband, the giggling girl in front of her would never really leave.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry, this is crack but I'm very attached to my Rule 63 Combe and Courf. 
> 
> I wasn't sure if I should put a trigger warning for patriarchal bullshit/ickiness so please, if you're uncomfortable with some of the implications (i.e. Courf locked in a marriage she despises to save her family) please, please, please let me know how to appropriately warn for it!


End file.
